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The federal minimum wage rose from $6.55 to $7.25 an hour on July 24, 2009. About 2.2 million workers were paid the federal minimum wage in 2008; many more are paid up to $1 an hour more than the minimum. The most populous states, except for Florida and Texas, have minimum wages higher than $7.25; Washington has the highest state minimum wage, $8.55 in 2009.

Low earners with children can receive Earned Income Tax Credits and refundable child care credits that result in federal payments of up to 50 percent of their earnings.

The unemployment rate rose to 9.8 percent in September 2009, a 26-year high, meaning 15.1 million US workers were jobless, including a third who were jobless 27 weeks or more, a record. The unemployment rate of Blacks, 15.1 percent, was almost twice that of whites, 8.9 percent; the Hispanic rate was 13 percent. The unemployment rate for teens aged 16-19 topped 25 percent, the highest rate since record keeping began in 1948.

Unemployment rates among the six million young male high-school dropouts is over 50 percent. Their composition varies over time, but about 10 percent of male high-school dropouts age 16 to 24 are in jail or juvenile detention at any one time. Young women who did not complete high school are far more likely to have children than those who completed high school.

Construction employment fell almost 20 percent between December 2007 and August 2009, and manufacturing employment fell 15 percent. However, the pace of job losses slowed to 250,000 a month from almost 700,000 a month earlier in 2009, giving hope that the economy may soon begin to grow again. With only a third of the $787 billion federal stimulus package spent by September 2009, there was hope that government spending would keep unemployment from rising.

Most jobless Americans quickly find new jobs but, despite unemployment insurance benefits that last up to 79 weeks in almost half the states, some jobless workers are running out of UI benefits before they find new jobs. UI benefits averaging $300 a week were being paid to almost nine million jobless workers in early August 2009.

Normally, UI benefits last a maximum of 26 weeks; the federal government provides an extra 13 weeks during recessions. In 2008, the federal government approved an extra 33 weeks of UI benefits, and in 2009 an unprecedented additional 33+20 weeks of federal benefits were available in states with unemployment rates above eight percent.

Unauthorized workers employed by local contractors who cleaned up apartments in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina won a $175,000 settlement in July 2009 from New Jersey-based Audubon Communities. The workers, who said they were promised $500 a week in cash, sued the contractors and Audubon in March 2008 for wage theft when they were not paid.

Between 1990 and 2005, employment in metro Las Vegas doubled. Many of Nevada's new workers moved from other states to fill construction and service jobs, and many were unauthorized foreigners. Nevada has the highest share of unauthorized workers of any state? an estimated 12 percent were unauthorized in 2008. Within the state, Las Vegas has one of the highest unemployment rates, almost 14 percent.

Migrant Impacts. Two Washington, DC think tanks released reports in August 2009 summarizing studies of the impacts of foreign workers on US-born workers. The Center for Immigration Studies concluded that low-skilled migrants have adverse effects on similar US-born workers; the Immigration Policy Center concluded that low-skilled migrants complement similar US-born workers.

CIS examined Current Population Survey data on 465 occupations between 2005 and 2007 and found only four that had more than 50 percent foreign-born workers: plasterers and stucco masons (56 percent of the workers were immigrants); agricultural graders and sorters (54 percent); miscellaneous personal appearance workers (53 percent); and tailors and dressmakers (51 percent). CIS concluded that there are few occupations US-born workers will not fill.

IPC examined the characteristics of unemployed US workers and concluded that recent immigrants are not in the same places or occupations as unemployed US workers: there "are no simple correlations between levels of unemployment and the presence of immigrant workers in a community."

Broken Laws. A survey of 4,400 workers in low-wage industries in 2008 in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York found that low-wage workers received an average of 15 percent less than they should have because employers did not pay them appropriate overtime or required off-the-clock work. About 40 percent of the interviewed workers were unauthorized, 30 percent were legal immigrants, and 30 percent US-born.

The report emphasized that violations of basic labor laws were widespread, with the failure to pay premium wages for overtime work most common (a quarter of those surveyed worked more than 40 hours the previous week). Interviewers found that a quarter of workers were not paid the minimum wage during the previous week and that over half of those who were underpaid received at least $1 an hour too little. Almost 60 percent of workers surveyed did not receive required pay stubs during the previous week, and less than 10 percent filed a workers compensation claim after a "serious injury on the job."

Workers earned an average of $340 the week before being surveyed, but should have earned $390, suggesting that labor law violations saved employers 15 percent.

Sectors in which employers are most likely to violate minimum wage laws include apparel, personal services, and private households. Childcare workers were most likely to be victims of both minimum wage and overtime pay violations.

H-1B. The H-1B program gives US employers easy access to foreign workers with at least a BS degree who will be employed in a US job requiring a BS degree. To limit the effects of this easy access, a cap of 65,000 H-1B visas a year was imposed by the Immigration Act of 1990.

This 65,000 cap was not reached until the late 1990s. When requests exceeded 65,000 a year, employers argued that they were losing the global competition for talent and persuaded Congress to temporarily increase the annual quota, at one point to 195,000 a year. Today, the quota is 65,000 a year for BS degree holders plus 20,000 for foreigners with advanced degrees from US universities. An unlimited number of H-1B foreigners can be admitted to work for US universities and nonprofit organizations.

Employers may request H-1B visas for workers six months before the employment start date, which is April 1 for the October 1 start of the fiscal year. On April 1, 2008, employers requested 165,000 H-1B workers; a year later, they requested 45,700 on the first date H-1B visa applications could be filed for FY10, and made few applications in subsequent months, so that fewer than 50,000 H-1B visas subject to the 65,000 a year cap were requested for FY10.

Most US employers are not required to try to recruit US workers before hiring H-1B foreigners. The H-1B and L-1 Visa Reform Act of 2009, re-introduced by Senators Richard Durbin (D-IL) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) in March 2009, would require US employers seeking H-1B visas to post their job ads on the internet and make good-faith efforts to recruit US workers to fill posted jobs. The Durbin-Grassley bill would raise the wages of the lowest-paid H-1B workers and limit H-1B visa holders to 50 percent of an employer's workforce.

BusinessWeek, in an October 12, 2009 cover story, highlighted the ways in which contractors recruit and employ foreigners with H-1B visas at wages below prevailing levels. However, Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), who chairs the Senate Immigration Subcommittee, wants to expand the number of H-1B visas. Schumer invited former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan to testify on the H-1B program on April 30, 2009. Greenspan said the cap on H-1B visas was "far too small to meet the need" and protects US workers from global competition, creating a "privileged elite" of US science and engineering workers that helps to increase inequality. He said: "Greatly expanding our quotas for the highly skilled would lower wage premiums over lesser skilled" workers.

The H-1B cap, Greenspan said, has "created a privileged elite whose incomes are being supported at noncompetitively high levels by immigration quotas on skilled professionals."

DHS on April 8, 2008 extended the length of time F-1 foreign student graduates of US universities in the fields of science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM) may remain in the US and engage in "optional practical training," employment related to their field of study, from 12 months to 29 months. Foreign STEM graduates can remain even longer if their US employer files an H-1B visa petition on their behalf. The Programmers Guild sued, alleging that DHS's action would increase the supply of STEM workers and depress their wages; a federal appeals court dismissed the suit in July 2009.

Law firm Shihab & Associates charged in July 2009 that USCIS was requiring more paperwork from firms requesting H-1B visas for Indian IT workers.

Students. It is sometimes wrongly assumed that most computer science graduates are foreigners in the US with temporary visas. In fact, the share of foreign students rises with level of education. About six percent of the 12,800 BS degree recipients in Computer Science and Engineering in 2007-08 were "nonresident aliens," but 50 percent of the 10,000 MS degree recipients were foreign students. (www.cra.org/CRN/articles/may09/tables9to16.html)

In 1973, 27 percent of US PhDs in science and engineering fields were awarded to foreign students; in 2003, the foreign share was 51 percent. In 1980, some 12,100 PhDs in science and engineering fields were awarded to foreign students; in 1996, the number was 21,300.

Some 37,000 PhDs were awarded in all fields in 1973; the number of PhDs peaked at 42,650 in 1998. In 2001, US universities awarded 40,700 PhDs, followed by 24,800 awarded in Germany, 16,100 awarded in Japan and 14,200 in the UK. In S&E fields, US universities awarded 25,500 PhDs, followed by 11,800 in Germany, 8,500 in the UK, 8,200 in China, and 7,400 in Japan.

A 2004 study emphasized that two-thirds of undergraduate degrees awarded in Asia are in science and engineering fields, compared to a third of the undergraduate degrees awarded in the US and Europe. However, the Asian countries sending the most students to the US to obtain PhDs in S&E fields have relatively large numbers of students graduating from second-tier US doctoral programs. For example, Chinese students earn 15 percent of all US chemistry PhDs, but only five percent of the chemistry PhDs awarded by the top-ranked US universities.

Steve Hamm and Moira Herbst, "America's High-Tech Sweatshops," BusinessWeek, October 12, 2009. Patrick Thibodeau, "Greenspan: H-1B cap would make U.S. workers privileged elite," Computerworld, April 30, 2009. Bernhardt, Annette, Ruth Milkman, Nik Theodore, Douglas Heckathorn, Mirabai Auer, James DeFilippis, Ana Luz Gonz lez, Victor Narro, Jason Perelshteyn, Diana Polson, Michael Spiller. 2009. Broken Laws, Unprotected Workers: Violations of Employment and Labor Laws in America's Cities. National Employment Law Project (www.nelp.org). Bound, John, Sarah Turner and Patrick Walsh. 2009. Internationalization of US Doctorate Education. NBER WP 14792. March.